A brief observation that Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler" (2008) is yet another film in the very recent wave of films about growing old. Specifically, it is a film that explores the tension between the dignities and indignities of growing older. Whereas other films seem to evoke a certain noble resignation to old age (characters coming to peace with their weakening bodies and lengthening lifespans), this film depicts that dignity and its loss, as the central character (Randy "The Ram" Robinson, earning an Oscar for Mickey Rourke) tries to accept his slow disintegration, and eventually gives up, refusing to "act his age", stubbornly clinging to a youthfulness that his body can no longer sustain.
It is perhaps not surprising that the film is about a man who does not successfully transition to elderliness -- the film is directed by Darren Aronofsky, whose other films (including "Pi" (1998) and "Requiem for a Dream" (2000) dwell deeply in to the failures of their central characters.
Hollywood once taught us that youth, even in old age, was king. Grandparents who learned how to play again were the ones we cheered, the ones we applauded for. Now that audiences are older, we're looking at age slightly differently. The heroes are those who can climb up and out of the prime of their lives, to a dignified, self-assured sunset. I imagine this new view will dominate much of cinema over the next decade. We'll see how it then transforms our culture (when life starts imitating the art that imitates it)
-AzS
Friday, October 16, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Musing Pictures: Psycho (1960)
I recently took the time to watch this classic Hitchcock thriller again, in the context of a screenwriting course I'm taking at Hopkins. I won't write much on it, since so much has already been written, but I'd like to focus on one scene.
Early in the film, Marion crane steals forty thousand dollars from her employer, and skips town. After driving West through the desert for several hours, she pulls over to the side of the road, to catch a bit of sleep. In the morning, she is woken up by a startling knock on the window. A police officer has a few questions for her.
The scene is very suspenseful, but unlike other moments in the film which generate suspense through subtle and often subconscious manipulation, this scene's suspense emerges out of a very clear dissonance between perspectives.
I've written elsewhere about Hitchcock's particular methods of inspiring suspense, but it's a topic that is always worth exploring. It's not for nothing that he is known as the "master of suspense", after all.
This particular scene contains three perspectives, or subjective points from which it is seen. Marion, of course, provides one, and the police officer provides another. The third, of course, is our own, as the detached-yet-engaged audience, observing the scene without being within it.
Marion's mind seems fairly clear to us. She must be nervous, and her reaction to the officer betrays her fears of being followed, or of being caught. We don't know what the officer is thinking (the windows to his soul, his eyes, are obscured by very dark sunglasses). Marion must be feeling a lot of guilt. The arrival of a police officer inspires her first to start the motor of her car. It is only a moment later, once she has come out of her sleep a bit more, that she realizes that he's not necessarily there because of the money she stole, and she plays along (albeit nervously).
Our perspective tends to follow Marion's. We see much of the first act of the film through her point of view. Her initial panic is our initial panic. But we can see the scene from outside of her car. We can see that she's parked quite unusually on the side of the road, and that as such, there's another reason for the police officer to be there. We can see before she does that if she stays calm, and says the right things, she can survive the encounter.
We feel this, so we don't quite share Marion's panic, but we also don't know for certain that the police officer isn't a threat. On the contrary, when Marion behaves suspiciously, we recognize the suspiciousness of her behavior, and are made uneasy by the police officer's unchanged expression. Did he notice? Did he pick up on anything? We pick up on the slip-ups because we know Marion is guilty of theft. We are made uneasy by the police officer's apparent lack of response. This sets us on edge, and lays the groundwork for the scene's most suspenseful aspect.
Because we can see Marion's mistakes more clearly than she can, it is natural that we would want to warn her about them, or at least to reprimand her for slipping up, so she doesn't do it again. It's the "no, don't say that!" or "don't do that!" sensation. Since we can not actually reach in to the film to affect Marion's behavior, we are left biting our nails, hoping she figures it out herself.
By the end of the scene, Marion is driving away, but since the police officer's face remains impassive, we are still left with the question of whether or not her escape is complete. On one hand, we wished just a moment ago that we could reach in to the film and warn Marion to watch her words and actions, and on the other hand, we're now left without enough information to know if there's a need for caution or not. Over the course of the scene, we're shuttled back and forth between knowing what the danger is without being able to address it, and being on that fine razor's edge between the dangerous and the safe.
When watching Hitchcock films, it's often worthwhile to track what we, as viewers, know over the course of the film. The dissonance between our observations and the observations of the characters with which we identify is at the heart of Hitchcock's scheme. He was named "Master of Suspense" because of his keen understanding of how to balance the delivery of these two types of information.
-AzS
Early in the film, Marion crane steals forty thousand dollars from her employer, and skips town. After driving West through the desert for several hours, she pulls over to the side of the road, to catch a bit of sleep. In the morning, she is woken up by a startling knock on the window. A police officer has a few questions for her.
The scene is very suspenseful, but unlike other moments in the film which generate suspense through subtle and often subconscious manipulation, this scene's suspense emerges out of a very clear dissonance between perspectives.
I've written elsewhere about Hitchcock's particular methods of inspiring suspense, but it's a topic that is always worth exploring. It's not for nothing that he is known as the "master of suspense", after all.
This particular scene contains three perspectives, or subjective points from which it is seen. Marion, of course, provides one, and the police officer provides another. The third, of course, is our own, as the detached-yet-engaged audience, observing the scene without being within it.
Marion's mind seems fairly clear to us. She must be nervous, and her reaction to the officer betrays her fears of being followed, or of being caught. We don't know what the officer is thinking (the windows to his soul, his eyes, are obscured by very dark sunglasses). Marion must be feeling a lot of guilt. The arrival of a police officer inspires her first to start the motor of her car. It is only a moment later, once she has come out of her sleep a bit more, that she realizes that he's not necessarily there because of the money she stole, and she plays along (albeit nervously).
Our perspective tends to follow Marion's. We see much of the first act of the film through her point of view. Her initial panic is our initial panic. But we can see the scene from outside of her car. We can see that she's parked quite unusually on the side of the road, and that as such, there's another reason for the police officer to be there. We can see before she does that if she stays calm, and says the right things, she can survive the encounter.
We feel this, so we don't quite share Marion's panic, but we also don't know for certain that the police officer isn't a threat. On the contrary, when Marion behaves suspiciously, we recognize the suspiciousness of her behavior, and are made uneasy by the police officer's unchanged expression. Did he notice? Did he pick up on anything? We pick up on the slip-ups because we know Marion is guilty of theft. We are made uneasy by the police officer's apparent lack of response. This sets us on edge, and lays the groundwork for the scene's most suspenseful aspect.
Because we can see Marion's mistakes more clearly than she can, it is natural that we would want to warn her about them, or at least to reprimand her for slipping up, so she doesn't do it again. It's the "no, don't say that!" or "don't do that!" sensation. Since we can not actually reach in to the film to affect Marion's behavior, we are left biting our nails, hoping she figures it out herself.
By the end of the scene, Marion is driving away, but since the police officer's face remains impassive, we are still left with the question of whether or not her escape is complete. On one hand, we wished just a moment ago that we could reach in to the film and warn Marion to watch her words and actions, and on the other hand, we're now left without enough information to know if there's a need for caution or not. Over the course of the scene, we're shuttled back and forth between knowing what the danger is without being able to address it, and being on that fine razor's edge between the dangerous and the safe.
When watching Hitchcock films, it's often worthwhile to track what we, as viewers, know over the course of the film. The dissonance between our observations and the observations of the characters with which we identify is at the heart of Hitchcock's scheme. He was named "Master of Suspense" because of his keen understanding of how to balance the delivery of these two types of information.
-AzS
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Musing Pictures: The Informant!
A brief thought on this nice little film from a filmmaker whose career I envy (in the best way, of course). Steven Soderbergh's story is set in the early and mid '90s. As such, it should be considered a 'period piece'. This is one of the first times that I've watched a 'period piece' and recognized the period being depicted as one that I've experienced first-hand. Until now, I've thought of films in three categories: First, there are those films that don't take place in a version of our real world -- fantasy films, some sci-fi, etc. Second, there are those films that take place contemporaneously with their production (so, a film set in the '50s that is made in the '50s is not a period piece, even if it might seem like one today). Third, there are period pieces -- films set in our world, but in a different era (be it past or future). Those are films that must both weave a compelling image of a world, but tie it so thoroughly to our reality that we can imagine them as being a part of the continuum of our history. Each of these categories can be sub-divided further, of course, but it's that third category that intrigues me. After seeing "The Informant!", it occurred to me that there are three kinds of period pieces -- films that re-create a past (or future, arguably) beyond recollection (films that take place in the middle ages, for example, or in the 19th century), and films that re-create a relatively recent past, one that can be remembered and reminisced about. This distinction is an interesting one because it is partially subjective. A film set in 1969 may be within the scope of memory for some viewers, but it depicts a world that other viewers have never experienced, and therefore, can not remember. One kind of film is full of interesting historical details (the roller-skating telephone operators in "Changeling", for example), meant to evoke in us not a memory, but a sense of wonder at the way of life that once was. The other kind is full of those details that are meant to evoke recognition and memory (the large cell phones, black-and-green computer screens, and boxy cars of "The Informant!") I think it would be interesting to look at films about the '90s that are made by people too young to remember that decade. It'll be a while before that happens, but I wonder what the differences will be between the depictions of the generation that remembers and the generation that re-creates.
-AzS
-AzS
Musing Pictures: Surrogates
I was fortunate to catch an early screening of Jonathan Mostow's "Surrogates" late last week. I had heard very little about the film, and as such, I could see it with a rare, open mind. The film plays on ideas established early in film's history: People are not necessarily who they appear to be -- all the more so when technology paints their mask. This classical sci-fi concept comes up in Fritz Lang's classic, "Metropolis", a German silent film from 1927. In "Metropolis", an inventor (C.A. Rotwang, played by Gustav Frolich, perhaps the original mad scientist) creates a robot in the image of a beautiful woman (Maria, Brigitte Helm). Maria is to be a sort of savior to the masses, but her doppelganger is meant to bring about their demise. The idea is very deeply cinematic -- in film, actors pretend to be other characters, and we accept the conceit, especially if it is done particularly well. Since we accept the conceit, we can believe that the characters in the film are justifiably fooled by similar imitations. After all, if we fault them for not seeing the truth behind a character's mask, we must also fault ourselves for seeing the characters and not the actors.
In a film that borrows heavily from "Metropolis", "Blade Runner" (1982, Ridley Scott) explores similar themes. Here, though, the imitation-humans are not designed to be re-creations of living people. On the contrary, they are so life-like, it is as if they have personalities and identities of their own. Where Fritz Lang's film is about the differences between the robotic/technological and the human/organic, Scott's film is precisely opposite -- it is about how inhuman humans can be, and about how much our technology can define our very humanity. In Scott's film, there are no clear distinctions between human and humanoid. Even within the film, characters have a hard time distinguishing between robotic and real. The effect works, because we can't make the distinction, either. After all, the characters are played by real people, regardless of the character's internal mechanisms.
To re-frame this: In "Metropolis", we see a good (human) and an evil (robot) version of the same character. We know the difference between the two because they behave differently, although their appearance is the same.
In "Blade Runner" we see human humans and robotic humans, and we can not tell the difference, which is precisely the point.
That brings us to "Surrogates", where real people control robotic versions of themselves, through which they experience life. Much like in "Blade Runner", no one is to be trusted -- people's 'surrogates' are not necessarily identical to the controllers themselves. This is established early on, when a beautiful woman turns out to be a robot controlled by an obese man. Whereas in "Blade Runner", the primary question to a character is "what are you?", "Surrogates" begs the question, "Who are you?" It's a "Mission: Impossible" scenario that includes and make suspect the identity of almost everybody.
Ultimately, all of these are attempts to explore what makes us human. Is our humanity our compassion ("Metropolis"), our substance ("Blade Runner"), our persona ("Surrogates")? As narrative devices, these all work because of the way we see movies. We see characters as people -- we see their performances, and extrapolate from them entire lives, backgrounds, personalities. When a film moves us, it is because we have been able to recognize humanity in the pattern of flashing lights and sounds that have danced before us. That is part of what makes movies so powerful: through film, we can be made to recognize reality on the surface of a screen.
-AzS
In a film that borrows heavily from "Metropolis", "Blade Runner" (1982, Ridley Scott) explores similar themes. Here, though, the imitation-humans are not designed to be re-creations of living people. On the contrary, they are so life-like, it is as if they have personalities and identities of their own. Where Fritz Lang's film is about the differences between the robotic/technological and the human/organic, Scott's film is precisely opposite -- it is about how inhuman humans can be, and about how much our technology can define our very humanity. In Scott's film, there are no clear distinctions between human and humanoid. Even within the film, characters have a hard time distinguishing between robotic and real. The effect works, because we can't make the distinction, either. After all, the characters are played by real people, regardless of the character's internal mechanisms.
To re-frame this: In "Metropolis", we see a good (human) and an evil (robot) version of the same character. We know the difference between the two because they behave differently, although their appearance is the same.
In "Blade Runner" we see human humans and robotic humans, and we can not tell the difference, which is precisely the point.
That brings us to "Surrogates", where real people control robotic versions of themselves, through which they experience life. Much like in "Blade Runner", no one is to be trusted -- people's 'surrogates' are not necessarily identical to the controllers themselves. This is established early on, when a beautiful woman turns out to be a robot controlled by an obese man. Whereas in "Blade Runner", the primary question to a character is "what are you?", "Surrogates" begs the question, "Who are you?" It's a "Mission: Impossible" scenario that includes and make suspect the identity of almost everybody.
Ultimately, all of these are attempts to explore what makes us human. Is our humanity our compassion ("Metropolis"), our substance ("Blade Runner"), our persona ("Surrogates")? As narrative devices, these all work because of the way we see movies. We see characters as people -- we see their performances, and extrapolate from them entire lives, backgrounds, personalities. When a film moves us, it is because we have been able to recognize humanity in the pattern of flashing lights and sounds that have danced before us. That is part of what makes movies so powerful: through film, we can be made to recognize reality on the surface of a screen.
-AzS
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Musing Pictures: Inglourious Basterds
'Holocaust revenge fantasy' is not a genre to be taken lightly. Very few films and very few filmmakers have ventured far in to this territory in the past, and certainly, no mainstream film has entered so deeply as "Inglourious Basterds." This latest film from director Quentin Tarantino ("Pulp Fiction", "Kill Bill", etc.) has received primarily positive reviews, and a healthy box office run. It has also generated a great deal of discussion, particularly surrounding its treatment (or re-treatment) of the history and horror of the Holocaust.
The film begins with an odd twist: an instantaneous blending of two genres. On the screen, text informs us: "Once upon a time, in Nazi-occupied France..." It is fairy tale and history, fiction and fact, a story where the good guys win, and a story where the ending is dispassionate. Immediately, Tarantino alerts us to the fact that what we are about to see is both far from and rooted in reality.
This dichotomy is always present and extremely important in cinematic fictionalization of historical events. Every historical re-telling must acknowledge its fictional side, or risk being seen as a mere story. Holocaust narratives require this all the more, because they are almost universally stories of individual tragedy and individual triumph, set in the context of human catastrophe. Holocaust stories can never convey the full scope of the Holocaust literally, so they resort to metaphor, ellipsis, and other devices to indicate those ideas that are beyond literal depiction. The girl in the red dress in "Schindler's List" stands in for the victims of the Holocaust who could never be fully depicted in the film.
Tarantino's Holocaust narrative does something unexpected with this approach. Instead of trying to tell a true story as a metaphor for or a window in to the broader Holocaust, he creates a very obviously fictional, fantastical story. We know (because we are told, and because we can discern) that the events portrayed in the film never happened. We also know, though, that behind the narrative lies some sort of strange truth. We don't get a history lesson comprised of facts, but we do get something more visceral.
The film's first sequence involves an interrogation between Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a French farmer. Landa is known in France as the "Jew Hunter", and he is on the scent of a local family he believes is hiding in the farmer's care. Landa is always polite, a seemingly pleasant, happy man. Over the course of the conversation, it becomes apparent that he is much more nefarious, and by the end of the scene, Landa's easy smile shows us just how evil he actually is.
It is easy to imagine such a scene playing out in the French countryside in the early days of the Nazi occupation. But Tarantino isn't interested in the accuracy of the moment. Over the course of the conversation, several small things happen to remind us that we are watching something other than historical re-enactment. At one point, the farmer has pulled out his pipe, and Landa asks permission to smoke his own pipe. When the farmer gives his permission, Landa pulls an enormous, outlandish, out-of-place pipe from his pocket. The effect is almost cartoonish, something more at-home in "Mary Poppins" than a Holocaust film. But it becomes a part of what Landa stands for, what he represents. Landa is a character we are meant to hate, and we are meant to understand that he is there representing an arrogant, boastful, self-confident, and totally evil aspect of the Third Reich itself. In "Schindler's List", concentration camp administrator Amon Goeth is purely evil, but he represents a very specific historical figure who himself was a part of a much larger operation. Landa, because his character is represented with these un-realistic elements, represents not a real person, but something much bigger.
Perhaps to put it in a different context, "Inglourious Basterds" represents itself as a sort of fairy tale. In fairy tales, the Big Bad Wolf is not a character meant to represent a real, historical wolf, but is rather a stand-in for the wolfish dangers of the world, the predatory sadism and greed that children (particularly children) must be wary of when out in the world (which is, itself, represented by the woods, the forest, or wherever it is that the wolf lurks).
By setting itself in this very fictional framework, "Basterds" achieves through playfulness a greater sense of Nazi evil than do other films through gory, heartbreaking realism. At the end of "Schindler's List", "The Pianist", or any of the past twenty years' worth of mainstream Holocaust films, we find ourselves very sad, perhaps even in tears, shocked by the enormity of the loss of life, the loss of humanity that the Holocaust's victims endured. It is rare that we come away from such films feeling more anger and disgust at the Nazis than sorrow for their victims. In "Basterds", we really, really hate Nazis.
Interestingly, Tarantino accomplishes this feat with very little depiction of what the Nazis did. There is only one scene in which Jews are massacred, and very little of the massacre is shown to the audience. On the contrary, it is the violence of the 'Basterds' that clues us in (again, indirectly, through obvious fiction) to the facts deep beyond the narrative.
The 'Basterds' are a group of Jewish American soldiers sent deep in to Nazi Occupied France to terrorize the occupiers. They are brutal. They kill without mercy. One of them bashes Nazi skulls with a baseball bat. Another carves swastikas in to their foreheads. They are all under orders to scalp their victims. We are shown a lot of this brutality (in Tarantino's unflinching and overblown style), and it is absolutely gruesome and bloody. But we know that there is something we haven't seen. The 'Basterds' are getting revenge, but we are forced to ask, 'revenge for what?' The full extent of Nazi brutality is the reason, of course, that they deserve their brutal fate. By asking the question, 'revenge for what?' we are led to think of the actual legacy of the Nazis, and again, the film draws our attention to the broad scope of real history while depicting events that we recognize as pure fiction.
Even in the film's final act, in which most of the Nazi high command is killed, we are provided with encouragement to be mindful of historical fact. At various moments, text appears on the screen to indicate different characters from the Nazi leadership. We recognize Hitler from popular culture, and Goebbels is introduced in the context of the narrative, but other prominent figures of the Nazi regime are identified to us, as if to say "you should recognize these people". It is, in a fictional context, an invitation to learn more about the facts, to learn the history.
Rather than giving us a picture of the Holocaust that we can walk away from and say "now I understand, now I know what it was all about", Tarantino gives us an experience that makes us feel, viscerally, just how angry we should be, and reminds us, by showing us what we know to be false, just how much we don't know of the truth of the Holocaust, of its true horrors.
In a very sophisticated way, 'Inglourious Basterds' achieves the goal of many Holocaust films -- it reminds us through ironic fiction that "we should never forget" the facts.
-AzS
The film begins with an odd twist: an instantaneous blending of two genres. On the screen, text informs us: "Once upon a time, in Nazi-occupied France..." It is fairy tale and history, fiction and fact, a story where the good guys win, and a story where the ending is dispassionate. Immediately, Tarantino alerts us to the fact that what we are about to see is both far from and rooted in reality.
This dichotomy is always present and extremely important in cinematic fictionalization of historical events. Every historical re-telling must acknowledge its fictional side, or risk being seen as a mere story. Holocaust narratives require this all the more, because they are almost universally stories of individual tragedy and individual triumph, set in the context of human catastrophe. Holocaust stories can never convey the full scope of the Holocaust literally, so they resort to metaphor, ellipsis, and other devices to indicate those ideas that are beyond literal depiction. The girl in the red dress in "Schindler's List" stands in for the victims of the Holocaust who could never be fully depicted in the film.
Tarantino's Holocaust narrative does something unexpected with this approach. Instead of trying to tell a true story as a metaphor for or a window in to the broader Holocaust, he creates a very obviously fictional, fantastical story. We know (because we are told, and because we can discern) that the events portrayed in the film never happened. We also know, though, that behind the narrative lies some sort of strange truth. We don't get a history lesson comprised of facts, but we do get something more visceral.
The film's first sequence involves an interrogation between Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and a French farmer. Landa is known in France as the "Jew Hunter", and he is on the scent of a local family he believes is hiding in the farmer's care. Landa is always polite, a seemingly pleasant, happy man. Over the course of the conversation, it becomes apparent that he is much more nefarious, and by the end of the scene, Landa's easy smile shows us just how evil he actually is.
It is easy to imagine such a scene playing out in the French countryside in the early days of the Nazi occupation. But Tarantino isn't interested in the accuracy of the moment. Over the course of the conversation, several small things happen to remind us that we are watching something other than historical re-enactment. At one point, the farmer has pulled out his pipe, and Landa asks permission to smoke his own pipe. When the farmer gives his permission, Landa pulls an enormous, outlandish, out-of-place pipe from his pocket. The effect is almost cartoonish, something more at-home in "Mary Poppins" than a Holocaust film. But it becomes a part of what Landa stands for, what he represents. Landa is a character we are meant to hate, and we are meant to understand that he is there representing an arrogant, boastful, self-confident, and totally evil aspect of the Third Reich itself. In "Schindler's List", concentration camp administrator Amon Goeth is purely evil, but he represents a very specific historical figure who himself was a part of a much larger operation. Landa, because his character is represented with these un-realistic elements, represents not a real person, but something much bigger.
Perhaps to put it in a different context, "Inglourious Basterds" represents itself as a sort of fairy tale. In fairy tales, the Big Bad Wolf is not a character meant to represent a real, historical wolf, but is rather a stand-in for the wolfish dangers of the world, the predatory sadism and greed that children (particularly children) must be wary of when out in the world (which is, itself, represented by the woods, the forest, or wherever it is that the wolf lurks).
By setting itself in this very fictional framework, "Basterds" achieves through playfulness a greater sense of Nazi evil than do other films through gory, heartbreaking realism. At the end of "Schindler's List", "The Pianist", or any of the past twenty years' worth of mainstream Holocaust films, we find ourselves very sad, perhaps even in tears, shocked by the enormity of the loss of life, the loss of humanity that the Holocaust's victims endured. It is rare that we come away from such films feeling more anger and disgust at the Nazis than sorrow for their victims. In "Basterds", we really, really hate Nazis.
Interestingly, Tarantino accomplishes this feat with very little depiction of what the Nazis did. There is only one scene in which Jews are massacred, and very little of the massacre is shown to the audience. On the contrary, it is the violence of the 'Basterds' that clues us in (again, indirectly, through obvious fiction) to the facts deep beyond the narrative.
The 'Basterds' are a group of Jewish American soldiers sent deep in to Nazi Occupied France to terrorize the occupiers. They are brutal. They kill without mercy. One of them bashes Nazi skulls with a baseball bat. Another carves swastikas in to their foreheads. They are all under orders to scalp their victims. We are shown a lot of this brutality (in Tarantino's unflinching and overblown style), and it is absolutely gruesome and bloody. But we know that there is something we haven't seen. The 'Basterds' are getting revenge, but we are forced to ask, 'revenge for what?' The full extent of Nazi brutality is the reason, of course, that they deserve their brutal fate. By asking the question, 'revenge for what?' we are led to think of the actual legacy of the Nazis, and again, the film draws our attention to the broad scope of real history while depicting events that we recognize as pure fiction.
Even in the film's final act, in which most of the Nazi high command is killed, we are provided with encouragement to be mindful of historical fact. At various moments, text appears on the screen to indicate different characters from the Nazi leadership. We recognize Hitler from popular culture, and Goebbels is introduced in the context of the narrative, but other prominent figures of the Nazi regime are identified to us, as if to say "you should recognize these people". It is, in a fictional context, an invitation to learn more about the facts, to learn the history.
Rather than giving us a picture of the Holocaust that we can walk away from and say "now I understand, now I know what it was all about", Tarantino gives us an experience that makes us feel, viscerally, just how angry we should be, and reminds us, by showing us what we know to be false, just how much we don't know of the truth of the Holocaust, of its true horrors.
In a very sophisticated way, 'Inglourious Basterds' achieves the goal of many Holocaust films -- it reminds us through ironic fiction that "we should never forget" the facts.
-AzS
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Musing Pictures: Defiance
Before I begin discussing "Defiance", I would like to thank www.labeh-er.com for syndicating this article, and to welcome all of the new readers who have arrived here via that site. www.labeh-er.com is now publicizing my musings on Jewish or Israeli films, beginning with this one.
"Defiance" (2008, directed by Edward Zwick) is a mainstream, A-list Holocaust movie. It is the latest (or not even the latest any more) in a string of large-scale Hollywood films to tackle the subject of Germany's genocide. Any film that approaches this subject must do so carefully -- the Holocaust is a minefield of sensitivities, misinformation and anger. One of the central questions asked about Hollywood's various interpretations has to do with re-creation, and it is one aspect of this question that I would like to discuss here.
Aside from the obvious perverse aspect of "re-creating" the Holocaust, any re-enactment is necessarily less powerful, less monumental than the event itself. At the same time, a creative re-telling can often find a broader audience, and may bear meaning to more people than outright documentary. "Schindler's List" was, in many ways, a challenge to what had been considered the most monumental Holocaust film of its day: "Shoah" (1985). This documentary by Claude Lanzmann is nothing but interviews and contemporary, contemplative footage of the places where the recounted events unfolded. Jewish survivors, their non-Jewish counterparts, and other witnesses of the Holocaust tell their stories. The picture painted by "Shoah" is very broad, very personal, and very genuine. There is no archival footage in the film, no re-enactment, no attempt at creative short-hand to speed the story along. There is no doubt that this is one of the most compelling, important films on the Holocaust, but it has a fatal flaw: "Shoah" has a running time of roughly nine and a half hours! A few film buffs might have caught it at a film festival or two, but for the most part, the only people with the patience and commitment to sit through the entire film are people who are already very familiar with the Holocaust and its narratives. "Schindler's List", on the other hand, was seen by millions upon millions of people all over the world.
Re-enactment and dramatic re-creation can make the Holocaust accessible to the general public. Since "Schindler's List", large-scale films from Hollywood and elsewhere have been rising to the task. Of course, there are dangers behind using fiction to teach historical fact. First, especially with the Holocaust, narrative films always understate the situation. As vast and sweeping as films such as "Schindler's List", "Life is Beautiful" or "The Pianist" are, they still tell only a tiny fraction of the historical story. Each narrative includes characters and events that are meant to represent the broader catastrophe, but they can never fully capture its scope. Since many film viewers are not attuned to the representational tools employed by filmmakers, and since many films do not call attention to their own artifice, viewers often fuse what they see in films with what they've learned as facts. When those of us who did not experience the Holocaust think of the Holocaust, do we imagine things as they were, or do we imagine fictional images that we've seen on TV? The problem becomes more significant when it comes to the atrocities themselves. The Nazis were notorious propagandists, and as such, they maintained very careful control of the films and photographs taken in or around the central apparatus of their Final Solution. There is almost no footage at all from within a death camp or concentration camp during the war. So, when we think of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, what images come to mind? Are they images from historical footage, or are they re-creations? I would argue that the harshest images that come to mind are not authentic, but re-creations we've seen in films or on television.
Filmmakers who tackle the Holocaust must grapple with the challenge of presenting a compelling re-creation while reminding their viewers that what they are seeing is, in fact, not nearly as awful as the Holocaust itself. In effect, filmmakers must remind their audience that they are seeing a movie. This goes against the grain of the Hollywood aesthetic, which emphasizes hiding the movie-ness of a movie (you're not supposed to realize you're watching a movie when you're watching it -- you are meant to be completely absorbed in its narrative). Spielberg achieved this in "Schindler's List" in several ways, most notably with the well-known "girl in the red coat". Although the film is shot in black-and-white, the scene in which the Warsaw Ghetto is liquidated includes one splash of color - the red of a little, lost girl's coat stands out among the shades of gray. The scene is deeply moving, but also obviously artificial. As we watch the movie, we are reminded that we are watching a movie. Once we realize that, we can begin to understand the girl, the scene, and in fact the entire film as references to a broader historical tragedy.
"Defiance" approaches this challenge in a slightly different way. It begins with grainy, black-and-white footage of the Nazi invasion of Belarussia. We hear the gunshots, the screams, the sounds of chaos as the film unspools. I was very nervous when this scene began. The audio that underlies the archival images is not authentic to those images, but recorded nearly seventy years later by voice actors and sound effects artists half a world away from where the events took place. I know this, but would a typical viewer know it? Was the film trying to pass fiction off as fact (when the fact itself is strong enough without requiring falsification) After a short while, one shot, in particular, begins to change. It begins as a grainy black-and-white shot, apparently archival, but the scratches slowly fade away, and the image slowly gains its color. What appeared archival was, in fact, re-creation. We are shown this as a reminder of the artifice of what we are seeing, (a visual reminder, where the aural reminder might have been missed by most viewers) but also as a reminder of its connection to historical fact. In its first few minutes, "Defiance" defines itself in the context of the history it re-creates.
This somewhat self-reflexive moment is something to look for in any Holocaust film, especially in the context of education. Does the film offer reminders of its artifice, of the fact that what it presents is not the same as what it represents?
I am curious about how this will apply to Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds", which comes out this month. That film's premise is so over-the-top that it might not need to incorporate this sort of visual disclaimer. I'm sure to have a lot to say about it when I do catch it in theaters a few weeks from now, and I'm sure I'll write about it here. See you then!
-AzS
"Defiance" (2008, directed by Edward Zwick) is a mainstream, A-list Holocaust movie. It is the latest (or not even the latest any more) in a string of large-scale Hollywood films to tackle the subject of Germany's genocide. Any film that approaches this subject must do so carefully -- the Holocaust is a minefield of sensitivities, misinformation and anger. One of the central questions asked about Hollywood's various interpretations has to do with re-creation, and it is one aspect of this question that I would like to discuss here.
Aside from the obvious perverse aspect of "re-creating" the Holocaust, any re-enactment is necessarily less powerful, less monumental than the event itself. At the same time, a creative re-telling can often find a broader audience, and may bear meaning to more people than outright documentary. "Schindler's List" was, in many ways, a challenge to what had been considered the most monumental Holocaust film of its day: "Shoah" (1985). This documentary by Claude Lanzmann is nothing but interviews and contemporary, contemplative footage of the places where the recounted events unfolded. Jewish survivors, their non-Jewish counterparts, and other witnesses of the Holocaust tell their stories. The picture painted by "Shoah" is very broad, very personal, and very genuine. There is no archival footage in the film, no re-enactment, no attempt at creative short-hand to speed the story along. There is no doubt that this is one of the most compelling, important films on the Holocaust, but it has a fatal flaw: "Shoah" has a running time of roughly nine and a half hours! A few film buffs might have caught it at a film festival or two, but for the most part, the only people with the patience and commitment to sit through the entire film are people who are already very familiar with the Holocaust and its narratives. "Schindler's List", on the other hand, was seen by millions upon millions of people all over the world.
Re-enactment and dramatic re-creation can make the Holocaust accessible to the general public. Since "Schindler's List", large-scale films from Hollywood and elsewhere have been rising to the task. Of course, there are dangers behind using fiction to teach historical fact. First, especially with the Holocaust, narrative films always understate the situation. As vast and sweeping as films such as "Schindler's List", "Life is Beautiful" or "The Pianist" are, they still tell only a tiny fraction of the historical story. Each narrative includes characters and events that are meant to represent the broader catastrophe, but they can never fully capture its scope. Since many film viewers are not attuned to the representational tools employed by filmmakers, and since many films do not call attention to their own artifice, viewers often fuse what they see in films with what they've learned as facts. When those of us who did not experience the Holocaust think of the Holocaust, do we imagine things as they were, or do we imagine fictional images that we've seen on TV? The problem becomes more significant when it comes to the atrocities themselves. The Nazis were notorious propagandists, and as such, they maintained very careful control of the films and photographs taken in or around the central apparatus of their Final Solution. There is almost no footage at all from within a death camp or concentration camp during the war. So, when we think of the atrocities committed by the Nazis, what images come to mind? Are they images from historical footage, or are they re-creations? I would argue that the harshest images that come to mind are not authentic, but re-creations we've seen in films or on television.
Filmmakers who tackle the Holocaust must grapple with the challenge of presenting a compelling re-creation while reminding their viewers that what they are seeing is, in fact, not nearly as awful as the Holocaust itself. In effect, filmmakers must remind their audience that they are seeing a movie. This goes against the grain of the Hollywood aesthetic, which emphasizes hiding the movie-ness of a movie (you're not supposed to realize you're watching a movie when you're watching it -- you are meant to be completely absorbed in its narrative). Spielberg achieved this in "Schindler's List" in several ways, most notably with the well-known "girl in the red coat". Although the film is shot in black-and-white, the scene in which the Warsaw Ghetto is liquidated includes one splash of color - the red of a little, lost girl's coat stands out among the shades of gray. The scene is deeply moving, but also obviously artificial. As we watch the movie, we are reminded that we are watching a movie. Once we realize that, we can begin to understand the girl, the scene, and in fact the entire film as references to a broader historical tragedy.
"Defiance" approaches this challenge in a slightly different way. It begins with grainy, black-and-white footage of the Nazi invasion of Belarussia. We hear the gunshots, the screams, the sounds of chaos as the film unspools. I was very nervous when this scene began. The audio that underlies the archival images is not authentic to those images, but recorded nearly seventy years later by voice actors and sound effects artists half a world away from where the events took place. I know this, but would a typical viewer know it? Was the film trying to pass fiction off as fact (when the fact itself is strong enough without requiring falsification) After a short while, one shot, in particular, begins to change. It begins as a grainy black-and-white shot, apparently archival, but the scratches slowly fade away, and the image slowly gains its color. What appeared archival was, in fact, re-creation. We are shown this as a reminder of the artifice of what we are seeing, (a visual reminder, where the aural reminder might have been missed by most viewers) but also as a reminder of its connection to historical fact. In its first few minutes, "Defiance" defines itself in the context of the history it re-creates.
This somewhat self-reflexive moment is something to look for in any Holocaust film, especially in the context of education. Does the film offer reminders of its artifice, of the fact that what it presents is not the same as what it represents?
I am curious about how this will apply to Quentin Tarantino's "Inglorious Basterds", which comes out this month. That film's premise is so over-the-top that it might not need to incorporate this sort of visual disclaimer. I'm sure to have a lot to say about it when I do catch it in theaters a few weeks from now, and I'm sure I'll write about it here. See you then!
-AzS
Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Musing Pictures: Public Enemies
I would like to begin by noting that what I have seen of director Michael Mann's work, I have generally enjoyed. "Public Enemies" is no exception.
That said, what I'd like to focus on here is, arguably, a weak point of the film.
For the past several years, Michael Mann has been working at the forefront of the digital field, shooting features such as "Collateral" and "Miami Vice" in new, digital formats. In "Collateral", the digital medium served the film very well, lending it an additional and appropriate urban grit. "Public Enemies", which was also shot digitally, is a bit of a tougher call.
Before I go in to the pros and cons of the use of digital in this particular movie, I'd like to take a step back, to try to explain what this whole film vs. digital debate is all about.
First, a description of what it is you see when you see a projected film or a projected digital video.
Film is really just a thin layer of chemicals that at one point reacted to light, and that have since been 'locked' in such a way that they retain the very color to which they reacted. Each frame of a film is a photographic exposure, like a slide. When light is focused through that frame, the colors of the chemicals 'paint' the light, so that when it hits a white surface somewhere beyond the other side, an image appears. When twenty four of these images flash up on that white screen every second, they appear to blend with one another, and slight variations from one projected photograph to the next appear like movement.
Now, there are two critical elements to this discussion: Film grain and color depth.
I'll start with color depth, since it is fairly basic. Film has a very broad range of colors and shades that it is capable of replicating. As light changes, the chemical reactions in the film change to match it. Roughly, for any two shades of light, film can react to and recreate the shade in-between. Digital images, as their name implies, rely on digital interpretation of light. Different shades of light generate different numerical signals. Unlike film, video has no in-betweens. There may be millions of colors available to digital video, but since it relies on these absolute calculations, it misses the infinite varieties between those millions of colors (the color must be A or B or C, etc., so if the actual color is in-between, it gets forced one way or the other). As a result, digital images flatten out in low-light or low-contrast situations, where the slight differences in color and light are critical.
Film grain is a little harder to define, though I could probably point it out in a movie theater. When you're watching a film, look closely at the images. You may notice that there is a certain almost invisible 'speckling' on the screen. This is film grain, which is really the random arrangement of chemical molecules in a frame. Some film stocks are very 'grainy' (especially smaller film stocks -- 16mm or 8mm film, like old newsreels (often 16mm) or the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination (8mm)), whereas other film stocks tend to be much finer (most of what we see in theaters today is very fine-grain 35mm film). The most important thing to note about film grain is that it is randomly distributed. If there is a thicker grain in one particular corner of the screen in one frame, it probably won't be there in the next. At 24 frames per second, especially if the grain is very fine, you're not very likely to see it at all. As a result, the colors on the screen blend together more smoothly, and take on a much more dimensional appearance.
Now, digital video functions in a very different way. We've discussed how it records light and color in increments, with none of the nuanced in-between steps that film can pick up. Another difference is the way that digital images are organized. Whereas film has randomly-distributed 'grain', digital images are projected in a neat grid. Row after row of pixels form the organizational structure of a digital image. With each successive frame, all of the pixels change color and intensity, creating the next photographic image. Here's the key, though: the pixels do not change location! This means that unlike film, where the grain's placement is random and constantly shifting, pixels stay stationary, and therefore, they are visible! Look closely at your computer monitor right now (which, chances are, is currently set to a resolution equal or greater than 'high definition' television). See the grid? Even if you were playing a movie, get right up close and you'd see the grid. The same goes for movie theaters. Get close to the screen when it's a digital image, and you'll see the individual boxes of color that make up the image, neatly arranged. Presumably, if there are enough pixels, they become too small for us to really notice. This is why high definition images have more pixels than standard definition images, and why the digital projections in movie theaters have even more pixels than the high def stuff we see at home. But no matter how small the pixels are, the grid itself is still there, and it's still a part of the image that we're seeing. It's like looking out a window through a screen. You rarely think about it, but if you were to move the screen out of the way, the image that you would see would be very different.
Will these issues always be present? I doubt it. There's a lot of innovation happening in the world of moving images. But does this mean that digital images are not as "good" as film images? Well, sort of. Depends on what you need. It's hard to justify shooting film for a TV show (although they do it for certain large-scale productions such as "Lost"). Video is faster, cheaper, more easily tweaked, and in the end, no one is going to watch their favorite sitcom on a big screen with a projector whirring behind them. We watch TV on TV, so why not shoot digitally?
For some movies, the digital option makes a lot of sense. Sometimes, it's an economic consideration. On the independent side of things, it's much cheaper to shoot video than to shoot film, so if you're going to make a movie without lots of money, video is the way to go. On a larger scale, the difference in cost is less substantial. Hollywood-level technologies are extremely expensive, and the personnel required to manage the data aren't cheap to hire, either. That said, digital works for some films (such as Michael Mann's "Collateral", mentioned above), where their content or subject matter or setting interact well with the 'look' of digital.
That brings me, at long last, to "Public Enemies". I saw it knowing it was shot digitally, and I found that I could strongly sense the difference. Some scenes looked 'cheap', with the colors or textures of a daytime soap opera, or of a 1990s action TV show, and others looked a little like they were shot on a camcorder, the darker areas collapsing in to 'noise' (the mess of dark purple floating spots that appear when the camera doesn't know how to differentiate between one kind of darkness and another -- the pesky 'in-betweens'). When I got home, I read this interesting article in Millimeter in which Michael Mann discusses the choice of shooting digitally, and the process of testing the digital process, and comparing it to traditional film. The kind of careful thought and consideration that went in to the choice to shoot digitally has made me wonder if perhaps I might have been thrown off by my own expectations. Mann chose to shoot the film in a way that would specifically undercut the romanticism of 1933 (whereas I expected it would be a highly romanticized story). He wanted it frank, straightforward, almost candid, so he chose a format that is still predominantly used for documentaries and the news.
Unfortunately, I think the way the film was shot may have undermined a little of what Mann was trying to do. There are some outstanding camera moves, fascinating bits of slow motion, very dramatic angles... all of which serve to romanticize the narrative. Also, the depression era was a time that seems to have romanticized itself. I'm not sure that it's possible to look at the high-stakes players of the era without romanticization creeping in. These inconsistencies between the choice of format and the other decisions surrounding the look of the film make the whole effect rather shaky. I wonder what might have happened if Mann had kept all of the beautiful production design (the cars, clothes, buildings, all the little details), but shot the movie with the kind of camera that local news stations use -- and if he had shot it as if he were just a guy in the room with a camera. It would have been totally different, but I think the unglamorized effect he was looking for might have come through more effectively.
-AzS
That said, what I'd like to focus on here is, arguably, a weak point of the film.
For the past several years, Michael Mann has been working at the forefront of the digital field, shooting features such as "Collateral" and "Miami Vice" in new, digital formats. In "Collateral", the digital medium served the film very well, lending it an additional and appropriate urban grit. "Public Enemies", which was also shot digitally, is a bit of a tougher call.
Before I go in to the pros and cons of the use of digital in this particular movie, I'd like to take a step back, to try to explain what this whole film vs. digital debate is all about.
First, a description of what it is you see when you see a projected film or a projected digital video.
Film is really just a thin layer of chemicals that at one point reacted to light, and that have since been 'locked' in such a way that they retain the very color to which they reacted. Each frame of a film is a photographic exposure, like a slide. When light is focused through that frame, the colors of the chemicals 'paint' the light, so that when it hits a white surface somewhere beyond the other side, an image appears. When twenty four of these images flash up on that white screen every second, they appear to blend with one another, and slight variations from one projected photograph to the next appear like movement.
Now, there are two critical elements to this discussion: Film grain and color depth.
I'll start with color depth, since it is fairly basic. Film has a very broad range of colors and shades that it is capable of replicating. As light changes, the chemical reactions in the film change to match it. Roughly, for any two shades of light, film can react to and recreate the shade in-between. Digital images, as their name implies, rely on digital interpretation of light. Different shades of light generate different numerical signals. Unlike film, video has no in-betweens. There may be millions of colors available to digital video, but since it relies on these absolute calculations, it misses the infinite varieties between those millions of colors (the color must be A or B or C, etc., so if the actual color is in-between, it gets forced one way or the other). As a result, digital images flatten out in low-light or low-contrast situations, where the slight differences in color and light are critical.
Film grain is a little harder to define, though I could probably point it out in a movie theater. When you're watching a film, look closely at the images. You may notice that there is a certain almost invisible 'speckling' on the screen. This is film grain, which is really the random arrangement of chemical molecules in a frame. Some film stocks are very 'grainy' (especially smaller film stocks -- 16mm or 8mm film, like old newsreels (often 16mm) or the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination (8mm)), whereas other film stocks tend to be much finer (most of what we see in theaters today is very fine-grain 35mm film). The most important thing to note about film grain is that it is randomly distributed. If there is a thicker grain in one particular corner of the screen in one frame, it probably won't be there in the next. At 24 frames per second, especially if the grain is very fine, you're not very likely to see it at all. As a result, the colors on the screen blend together more smoothly, and take on a much more dimensional appearance.
Now, digital video functions in a very different way. We've discussed how it records light and color in increments, with none of the nuanced in-between steps that film can pick up. Another difference is the way that digital images are organized. Whereas film has randomly-distributed 'grain', digital images are projected in a neat grid. Row after row of pixels form the organizational structure of a digital image. With each successive frame, all of the pixels change color and intensity, creating the next photographic image. Here's the key, though: the pixels do not change location! This means that unlike film, where the grain's placement is random and constantly shifting, pixels stay stationary, and therefore, they are visible! Look closely at your computer monitor right now (which, chances are, is currently set to a resolution equal or greater than 'high definition' television). See the grid? Even if you were playing a movie, get right up close and you'd see the grid. The same goes for movie theaters. Get close to the screen when it's a digital image, and you'll see the individual boxes of color that make up the image, neatly arranged. Presumably, if there are enough pixels, they become too small for us to really notice. This is why high definition images have more pixels than standard definition images, and why the digital projections in movie theaters have even more pixels than the high def stuff we see at home. But no matter how small the pixels are, the grid itself is still there, and it's still a part of the image that we're seeing. It's like looking out a window through a screen. You rarely think about it, but if you were to move the screen out of the way, the image that you would see would be very different.
Will these issues always be present? I doubt it. There's a lot of innovation happening in the world of moving images. But does this mean that digital images are not as "good" as film images? Well, sort of. Depends on what you need. It's hard to justify shooting film for a TV show (although they do it for certain large-scale productions such as "Lost"). Video is faster, cheaper, more easily tweaked, and in the end, no one is going to watch their favorite sitcom on a big screen with a projector whirring behind them. We watch TV on TV, so why not shoot digitally?
For some movies, the digital option makes a lot of sense. Sometimes, it's an economic consideration. On the independent side of things, it's much cheaper to shoot video than to shoot film, so if you're going to make a movie without lots of money, video is the way to go. On a larger scale, the difference in cost is less substantial. Hollywood-level technologies are extremely expensive, and the personnel required to manage the data aren't cheap to hire, either. That said, digital works for some films (such as Michael Mann's "Collateral", mentioned above), where their content or subject matter or setting interact well with the 'look' of digital.
That brings me, at long last, to "Public Enemies". I saw it knowing it was shot digitally, and I found that I could strongly sense the difference. Some scenes looked 'cheap', with the colors or textures of a daytime soap opera, or of a 1990s action TV show, and others looked a little like they were shot on a camcorder, the darker areas collapsing in to 'noise' (the mess of dark purple floating spots that appear when the camera doesn't know how to differentiate between one kind of darkness and another -- the pesky 'in-betweens'). When I got home, I read this interesting article in Millimeter in which Michael Mann discusses the choice of shooting digitally, and the process of testing the digital process, and comparing it to traditional film. The kind of careful thought and consideration that went in to the choice to shoot digitally has made me wonder if perhaps I might have been thrown off by my own expectations. Mann chose to shoot the film in a way that would specifically undercut the romanticism of 1933 (whereas I expected it would be a highly romanticized story). He wanted it frank, straightforward, almost candid, so he chose a format that is still predominantly used for documentaries and the news.
Unfortunately, I think the way the film was shot may have undermined a little of what Mann was trying to do. There are some outstanding camera moves, fascinating bits of slow motion, very dramatic angles... all of which serve to romanticize the narrative. Also, the depression era was a time that seems to have romanticized itself. I'm not sure that it's possible to look at the high-stakes players of the era without romanticization creeping in. These inconsistencies between the choice of format and the other decisions surrounding the look of the film make the whole effect rather shaky. I wonder what might have happened if Mann had kept all of the beautiful production design (the cars, clothes, buildings, all the little details), but shot the movie with the kind of camera that local news stations use -- and if he had shot it as if he were just a guy in the room with a camera. It would have been totally different, but I think the unglamorized effect he was looking for might have come through more effectively.
-AzS
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